This patent application claims a benefit of priority from Italian Patent Application No. MI2001A002064 filed Oct. 5, 2001, the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a process for bevelling the edges of wood-chip boards or boards of similar material and the bevelled boards thereby obtained.
It is known that one of the best materials for manufacturing furnishing elements is wood-chip material because of resistance and cheapness thereof. This material is formed of wood fragments pasted with a synthetic resin based binder and pressed in such a way to obtain boards. These boards can then be coated by laminated plastic or valuable wood imitating melamine papers.
The boards can further be subjected to further workings for bevelling the edges so as to obtain furniture of greater aesthetic value. In particular, bevelled boards are especially required by office furniture manufacturer, for example for manufacturing desk-tops, wherein the bevelling of the edge attenuates the contact with the user thus producing a pleasant sensation of softness.
However, many of the known processes make it possible to obtain only bevelled chip boards having a polygonal profile, useable for desks of traditional type and not for the more modem ergonomic desks which use tops provided with at least one curved side, that is the one corresponding to the user position.
To obtain a bevelling on chip boards having curved sides it is possible to manufacture separately a bevelled edge of polymeric material, generally polyurethane or PVC, to be applied to the side of said boards.
However, in the case that polyurethane is used, the resulting product has a high production cost since this material has to be molded with moulds fitting the curvings of the sides of the board. Hence, to obtain the edge of a board, it is necessary to produce many elements which, assembled together, reproduce the curvings of the board itself, or to carry out a mould for each curving. However, for this purpose a plurality of moulds are necessary which successively cannot be used again for edging boards of different curving.
On the other hand, if to reduce the production costs a bevelled edge in soft PVC is used, adaptable to the curving of sides of any board, other disadvantages occur and in particular the reduced curving available, the risk for the health of the user due to the contact with PVC and the fact that a clear division line is produced between the sides of the board and the edge applied thereto, with possible deposits of dirtiness.
Other possible known bevelling processes can be applied only to boards formed of medium density fibres (MDF boards).
Among these, a first process consists in bevelling the sides of the boards through a pantograph and in successively superficial finishing of the board, which must necessarily be effected through painting with high resistance paints. However, painting is an expensive as well as polluting operation and moreover the above said paints form a worse coating than the melamine papers, both from qualitative and aesthetic point of view.
Alternatively, MDF boards already coated by melamine papers can be bevelled in proximity to the sides, but this operation obviously causes the removal of the coating and therefore it can be made only on the lower face of the board which then remains unfinished. Consequently, boards get thin at the edges but the desired effect, that is the sensation of softness in the contact between the user and the furniture, is not obtained.
The object of the present invention is therefore to provide a process for bevelling wood-chip boards or boards of similar material, which is free from said drawbacks. Said object is achieved with a process whose main features are disclosed in the first claim and other features are disclosed in the following claims.
An advantage of the process according to the present invention consists in that it allows the obtaining of wood-chip boards or boards of similar material, bevelled on both faces, of any shape and without applied edges.
Another advantage of the process according to the present invention lies in the execution simplicity and in the cheapness thereof.